as the very spot where the vagabond took his long nap, he attempted to bully the attendant and drink-mixer in the hut, and openly flaunted his incredulity until the bar-tender showed him a long bunch of Rip’s hair, which hung like a scalp on a nail, and the rusty barrel and stock of the musket.  The cabin is, indeed, full of old guns, pistols, locks of hair, buttons, cartridge-boxes, bullets, knives, and other undoubted relics of Rip and the Revolution.  This cabin, with its facilities for slaking thirst on a hot day, which Rip would have appreciated, over a hundred years old according to information to be obtained on the spot, is really of unknown antiquity, the old boards and timber of which it is constructed having been brought down from the Mountain House some forty years ago.

The old Mountain House, standing upon its ledge of rock, from which one looks down upon a map of a considerable portion of New York and New England, with the lake in the rear, and heights on each side that offer charming walks to those who have in contemplation views of nature or of matrimony, has somewhat lost its importance since the vast Catskill region has come to the knowledge of the world.  A generation ago it was the centre of attraction, and it was understood that going to the Catskills was going there.  Generations of searchers after immortality have chiseled their names in the rock platform, and one who sits there now falls to musing on the vanity of human nature and the transitoriness of fashion.  Now New York has found that it has very convenient to it a great mountain pleasure-ground; railways and excellent roads have pierced it, the varied beauties of rocks, ravines, and charming retreats are revealed, excellent hotels capable of entertaining a thousand guests are planted on heights and slopes commanding mountain as well as lowland prospects, great and small boarding-houses cluster in the high valleys and on the hillsides, and cottages more thickly every year dot the wild region.  Year by year these accommodations will increase, new roads around the gorges will open more enchanting views, and it is not improbable that the species of American known as the “summer boarder” will have his highest development and apotheosis in these mountains.

Nevertheless Mr. King was not uninterested in renewing his memories of the old house.  He could recall without difficulty, and also without emotion now, a scene on this upper veranda and a moonlight night long ago, and he had no doubt he could find her name carved on a beech-tree in the wood near by; but it was useless to look for it, for her name had been changed.  The place was, indeed, full of memories, but all chastened and subdued by the indoor atmosphere, which impressed him as that of a faded Sunday.  He was very careful not to disturb the decorum by any frivolity of demeanor, and he cautioned the artist on this point; but Mr. Forbes declared that the dining-room fare kept his spirits at a proper level.  There